If David Gregory was a teacher he would be fired. The hand wringing across the land would be extraordinary. The collapse of our educational system. Why do we keep pundits who are not performing. It is unfair to the television watchers. The institution of Meet the Press would be considered in great trouble. The only way to save it would be to allow the magic of the marketplace - yes, yes, the magic of the marketplace to work - well, its magic. There would be editorials across the land. The New York Post would claim it is the utter desolation of our pundit system. The Washington Post would call for national implementation of a very expensive pundit training academy that just happen to be developed by Kaplan. The New York Times would be more measured but suggest we are facing a problem that must be solved. It is the damned pundits union don't you know. Why do we keep coddling these pundits when they are not getting results? Why can't we make the hard decisions about our pundits? The corporate wing of the democratic party would call for pundit reform. The Republicans would call for the end to televised punditry all together. The Left of Center would join the punditry reform movement saying we must be realistic. Our political dialogue is falling behind other nations. We are a nation at risk at having below level punditry. People will write books about how they train pundits in other nations, how much they pay them, what they emphasize.
David Gregory alas is not a teacher. He is part of a protected class. Pundits can fail at almost every type of accountability. They can get poor ratings. They can be wrong on facts multiple times. They can help lead a nation to war where hundreds of thousands of lives are lost. They can sleep through the lead up to one of the greatest financial collapses in history. Pundits are not like teachers, they are like our protected species. They must preserved at all costs. If David Gregory is having trouble nesting on Meet the Press we must spend whatever money we can to create an ecology where he can survive. If we lose David Gregory we will not have anymore David Gregory's in punditry. This is a possibility too horrible to contemplate. Good thing for David Gregory he is not a teacher but a protected species.